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Before You Buy 145 (Transcript)

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Leo Laporte: Hey, hey,
hey! Welcome to Before You Buy, the product review show on Twit, where we get
all the latest and greatest stuff and give it to our staffers, our friends, and
see what they think about it. What it’s like to use it in real life. At the end
of the show, we’re going to review the latest flagship phone from Samsung, the
Galaxy Note 4. But you know, at 800 bucks it’s kind of pricy! How much can you
get for 70 bucks? Let’s find out! Sam Sabri is an
editor at Windows Central and he has, in his hot little hands, this little
phone, it’s the Nokia 530. Hi Sam!

Sam Sabri: How’s it
going?

Leo: It’s going great,
I know you’ve probably used every windows phone out there. I used to have the
1520, which I loved. I’ve played with the 1120, those are both very high end
Nokia. Whoops, did I say the word Nokia? We don’t’ use the
word Nokia do we?

Sam: We say Microsoft.

Leo: Microsoft Lumia phones. These used to
be Nokia. In fact, this one still says Nokia on the top, is that going to be
burned off?

Sam: It might fall off over time. Just kind
of fade away.

Leo: They are running a windows phone, in
this case Windows phone 8.1, the latest version of the Windows operating
system.

Sam: Correct.

Leo: Give us a kind of rundown on this. This
is not a, is this a phone…it is being sold in the US, this one is from Cricket.
But it’s a phone also intended for a global phone, right?

Sam: Right, so this is a phone for immerge-markets,
where people don’t go on contracts and pay 99 dollars up front, and pay a
little bit every few months for the next few years for a phone. This is where people buy a phone outright, and use it for
two or three years. So that’s where people are more price conscious, and that’s
why Nokia, I mean Microsoft made a $70 smartphone, running Windows 8.1.

Leo: 70 dollars! There’s got to be some
compromises with that.

Sam: There are compromises. You do get
Cortana, but you make a few compromises, especially with the screen. You were
noting earlier it just doesn’t look too good. And that’s because it’s missing
clear black. Clear Black is Microsoft’s polarizer which gives you better
contrast, and makes the screen look really good outside.

Leo: All the old Lumia phones, really, like
the 1520 I used to have, popped! And they almost looked like OLED screen. These
are not OLED displays?

Sam: No, this is an LCD on the 530.

Leo: Yeah, it looks like a little bit of a
washed out LCD.

Sam: Yeah, viewing angles aren’t too good
when you start turning it around a little bit, but straight on its not too bad,
especially when it’s $70. And that’s how you have to approach this phone when
you review it. This is a 70 dollar phone, it’s not a Galaxy note 4, a Lumia
1520, it’s something you buy, and it’s super cheap.

Sam: Right, so it has a quad core processor
from QUALCOMM, the snapdragon 200. 1.2 gigahertz. You
can run most apps and games. It has 512 megabytes of RAM. So there are a few
apps and games in the Windows phone store that require 1 gigabyte of RAM or
more, but those are very few and for the most part 99% off all apps and games
in the windows phone store can run on this device.

Leo: Including Microsoft office!

Sam: Right. You get it.

Leo: That’s pretty impressive. So there are
games that won’t work, but those are going to be the very high end games that
need a lot of RAM.

Sam:Right, and
what we see is a new game might come out, it might not work on this device, but
a few updates later they’ll optimize it and it’ll run on low memory devices.

Leo: Interesting. Now you said Cortana, the
speech recognition system built into windows phone works. Is it a full Cortana?
Voice, sound works or…

Sam: Yeah. No, this is the same Cortana
you’ll get on the 1520 600 dollar smartphone. That’s the one great thing about
windows phone is it doesn’t matter what price range you’re buying at, the OS is
the same experience across all levels. This is the Lumia, so you’ll have a few
exclusive Lumia apps, compared to like an HTC 1 for Windows phone, but for the
most part everything you’d expect for the 1520 will run on the 530.

Leo: Nokia, when they sold the mobility division
to Microsoft, kept the Here maps, all the Here products, but they did license
them to Microsoft, is Here maps and Here navigation on here?

Sam: Right. You get Here
maps, so you get offline map support. So this makes for a great travel phone,
if you don’t want to bring your super expensive iPhone when you’re on vacation
where pick pocketing might be a little bit higher risk than when you are at
home. Bring the 70 dollar phone for navigation, and if it gets stolen it’s not
too much of a loss, because you only spent 70 bucks on it.

Leo: I guess you have to ask the question,
how is it as a phone?

Sam: It’s not too bad. It’s weird, my daily
phone is a 1520, and it’s a high end phone.

Leo: I love that phone.

Sam: With the most high end specs so when I
spent the past week playing with this, it’s a different experience. There are
compromises, there’s no front facing camera, no dedicated camera button.

Leo: Okay.

Sam: It’s not too bad as a phone. Going
forward, I think I’ll use it more as a gym device, take it to the gym, and play
music.

Leo: Yeah, it’s small enough,
it’d be good for that.

Sam: I won’t worry, if you drop a weight on
it, you won’t cry because it’s so cheap.

Leo: It does have these colorful backs. I
have blue, you have?

Sam: Green. You can get orange, black and
white. And what’s also cool too is the back, the shells pop off.

Leo: Oh neat.

Sam: Let’s see if I can do it. The shell
pops off, and then you can get another shell. I’ll put it on. And this shell
has a flip cover.

Leo: Oh! That’s pretty cool!

Sam: So you don’t have to buy a case and put
it over the phone. You just replace the back, and the back already has a flip
cover attached to it.

Leo: I have to say it also feels like a very
durable phone. It feels like a phone that I could drop and not worry too much
about. Especially with that flip cover case on it.

Sam: No, you know, it’s a great phone. You
were mentioning earlier this would be a great kid phone, and that’s exactly who
I’d recommend it for. If you want your child to have a
smartphone, but you don’t want to spend a lot of money because they’re a kid.
They break things pretty easily and this is the kind of phone for them.

Sam: Yeah, you can go onto their account and
set it as a child account, so they won’t have access to certain parts of the
web, certain apps and games. You can set it up so they can’t buy apps and games
without your permission, and games will have to meet a certain rating. Maybe E for everyone sort of thing, versus a teen rating and so on.

Leo: And just to prove, kids can take
selfies with this phone. I’m going to take one, and another one. There you go,
see? They just have to turn it around, there’s no front facing camera.

Sam: Right, no front facing camera.

Leo: And this is 5 megapixels, this camera?

Sam: Five megapixels.

Leo: That’s not bad, it’s better than many
selfie cameras frankly.

Sam: Right. Its fixed
focus though, so you won’t be able to tap and focus.

Leo: Ah, okay.

Sam: That’s another trade of with it being
70 bucks. The focus is the same no matter what.

Leo: Now, I have to point out that as most
phones for developing markets, this has a radio built into it.

Sam: Right.

Leo: Is it dual SIM as well?

Sam: There’s a single SIM and dual SIM
model, I don’t know which one you have, I have a
single SIM.

Leo: I see.

Sam: In the virgin market, that’s real fine.
The dual SIM, here in the US, I’m not sure if the T-Mobile and Cricket version
are Dual SIM but mostly likely I think they’re single SIM, but when you go
abroad you’ll find a dual SIM version.

Leo: Yeah, you really don’t need Dual SIM in
the US. I notice, I’m getting 4G right now, so it does
support the 4G network.

Sam: Right.

Leo: This is pretty sweet I have to say. 70 bucks.

Sam: Yeah.

Leo: It’s available in the US from Cricket?

Sam: Cricket, T-Mobile. For the T-Mobile
version, you can get, I couldn’t find on the T-Mobile website, you have to go
to the Microsoft store .com website.

Leo: Okay, aright.

Sam: So cheap. 70 bucks.
Extra shells are 10 dollars each, you can get the flip shell version for 15
dollars and they can match your outfit, your mood and stuff like that.

Leo: This matches my outfit just fine.

Sam: Just perfectly.

Leo: Alright, pros and cons.

Sam: Pros, it’s cheap. Cheap
way to get Cortana and windows phone. You can run most apps and games on
it. Cons, the display, not a fan of it. Of course, you
know, I’ve been spoiled by higher end displays. Most storage space, it only has
4 gigabytes of storage, so you’ll have to get a micro SD if you want to install
more games, apps, music. No selfies is another con, especially if you’re a kid.
Unless you flip the phone around.

Leo: It does support SD card though, which
is…

Sam: Right up to 128 gigabytes.

Leo: That’s something you can’t say for all
the flagship phones. So try, buy, don’t buy? What do
you think Sam Sabri?

Sam: Buy for your kid, buy for yourself, if
you want a phone at the gym, or when you’re snowboarding, skiing, or you just
want a phone to make phone calls, and be stupid, maybe get it crashed and
stuff. It’s a great phone for that.

Leo: Yeah, it’s a great burner phone.

Sam: Exactly. It’s hard not to recommend it
when its 70 bucks and you get a good experience. There’s worse way to spend
your money.

Leo: You can’t get a meal in Petaluma for
two people for 70 bucks. The Nokia Lumia 550, Sam Sabri
for Windows Central, he gives this a buy! We should point out that in the past,
when we’ve talked to Sam and Dan Rabino and others, it’s been Windows phone central. Your
new name Windows Central and Windowscentral.com.

Sam: Exactly.

Leo: Same great people, same great content,
brand new name. Thank you Sam! Sam Sabri, great to
talk to you, really appreciate it!

Sam: No problem, any time.

Leo: Next we’re going to talk with Padre,
Father Robert Ballacer, he’s the host in This Week in Enterprise Tech, Coding 101,
the Know How show, PACO, Padres Corner. And he took a look at something a
little bit odd. It’s called the live pro, projector and hotspot from Sprint. Let’s
watch.

Father Robert Ballacer: The Sprint
LivePro is marketed as the Swiss army knife of
electronics. Available from Sprint for 300 dollars with a two
year service agreement. The LivePro combines a hotspot projector,
battery bank and Android device into a neat 4.7 by 4.7 by 1.1 inch 14 oz.
package. The left side of the live pro houses the adjustment ring for the
projector, buttons for power and the power bank, as well as slots for SIM, and
micro SD cards. To the rear of the devices power, USB, full sized HDMI and a
headphone jack. Underneath the LivePro you’ll find a standard mounting point for
attaching the LivePro to a tripod and a kick stand for angling the projector.
The entire package is built around a 5000 milliamp hour lithium ion battery
that can drive the hotspot for up to 10 hours. It was also enough to fully
charge the 3100 milliamp hour battery in my 1plus one, and still have enough juice for four hours of hotspot operation. That
is a lot of power, but running the projector will kill the battery in about 100
minutes. And having the hotspot active at the same time will drop your run time
below an hour. And unfortunately, because of the large battery and power draw
you can’t charge the LivePro from a USB port like you might with a standard
hotspot. It needs a 12 volt adapter, which limits the charging options. The LivePro
comes with Android 4.2 Jellybean, and a 4 inch 800 by 40 WVGA touch screen. In
addition to the touch screen, the LivePro has the full Android compliment of
buttons, as well as quick keys for volume, projector, and sleep. I was a little
disappointed that the LivePro uses Android 4.2, but the dual core 1.2 gigahertz
processor makes it feel snappy. And even 4.2 gives the LivePro notable features,
like the ability to wirelessly project, and a secondary device for checking
your apps. The projector is literally the bright spot of the LivePro. Sporting
a 100 lumen light source and a DOP element, the LivePro natively projects 854
by 480. The scale inputs of up to 1080 P. In addition
to being able to play whatever media might be in the Micro USB slot, USB port,
or coming through HDMI, the LivePro can also display whatever is seen on
screen. The LivePro packs a single speaker in the bottom of the unit that is
plenty loud. Which is good, because when the fan starts up
you’re going to need some volume. With decent indoor light power, loud,
if tinny audio, and an interface that can make the LivePro a self-contained
business projector or a Theater. The LivePro definitely gets props for packing
features into a small package. But then we get to the hotspot. And the hotspot
on the LivePro is, in a word, poor. I took the LivePro to Petaluma, San Francisco,
San Jose, Oakland, Berkley, and Las Vegas, and it very rarely connected to
sprints new spark LTE service with any measurable signal strength. In fact, it
almost never connect to Sprints 3G service. We thought
there may have been a problem with the review unit, but even replacing it left
us with sub-par cellular coverage. What makes this unacceptable is that I’ve
tried other sprint devices, including a galaxy note, and other Sprint hotspots,
and connection speeds with those devices reach passed 9 to 15 megabits per
second, while the LivePro struggled to go past one and 5 with a supposedly
superior network. Still with the combination of the other features, the lack of
a useable hotspot wouldn’t be a problem, if the sprint LivePro weren’t a
hotspot. That was supposed to use Sprints latest generation LTE service. That you had to pay for, every month, for two years. The
somewhat sensible combination of technology in the Sprint LivePro,
left me scratching my head. Wondering if this was the most
stupidly awesome gadget ever.Or the most awesomely stupid
Frankenstein’s monster.Stupidly awesome, awesomely
stupid? Stupid awesome! Awesome, so stupid! Oh so awesome. Oh so stupid.
In the end, the sprint LivePro is an interesting multifunction device with
really bad implementations of some of those functions.

Leo: You want to like this don’t you?

Fr. Robert: I really do, I like the combination of
gadgets. It’s a projector, it’s an Android device, it’s a battery bank, it’s a
hotspot, but the problem is…

Leo: It does none of them well!

Fr. Robert: It does none of them well. The projector
is okay, but it’s underpowered, the battery bank isn’t big enough. The hotspot
is horrible. You’re paying for service, if I can only get one megabit down and,
you know, half a megabit up. It’s crap. And here’s the worst thing about it.
I’ve used Sprint devices and they are much, much faster, so there’s something
wrong with the device. It’s not Sprint.

Leo: Oh. Alright.Although support from Sprint isn’t great either.

Fr. Robert: Right.

Leo: So let’s get the pros and cons.

Fr. Robert: On the pros, I do like the projector, I do like the battery bank. I like the idea of
building smart into a hotspot. Android, the projector, the battery, that’s
great. On the con side, it’s got to be that it’s an old version of Android,
which I don’t understand why you would do that. It’s got to be that the
charging is limited, because you have to charge it VIA this 12 volt plug here,
you can’t charge it from a USB source, and of course, it’s a very weak hotspot,
and if that’s what you’re really paying for, this is not the product for you.

Leo: If you were to pick one thing that this
does well, would it be the projector?

Fr. Robert: It would be the projector.

Leo: Okay.

Fr. Robert: And I would say this. If I had the
ability to buy this for like 300 dollars, but no contract, I actually would get
it. It is a decent battery bank, it’s a very cool projector, it’s got alot of features that I’d like to use, but I’m
not paying that 24 months of service for a hotspot that doesn’t really work.
It’s a don’t buy.

Leo: It’s a do not buy. Sad to say, on, what
is this called? The Sprint...

Fr. Robert:LivePro.

Leo: Super Vela dine, super heterodyne
transmitter, receiver. You know my son, who lives kind of in a quazi frat house in college at CU boulder, said could you
send me a projector TV, they want to watch the
football games on 80 inches. I should have just sent him this! Yeah sure son!

Fr. Robert: The best part is he could watch it on
this tiny little screen, and then project it onto a tiny wall screen! It’s the
best of all worlds, really!

Leo: His frat brothers would have killed
him!

Fr. Robert: I think so.

Leo: It would have been homicide. Alright,
thank you Robert Ballacer, He is the Digital Jesuit.
You find him on Know How, Coding 101, and Padres corner.

Fr. Robert: PACO, I like that.

Leo: PACO, you don’t call it PACO?

Fr. Robert:I don’t call it PACO, I do now.

Leo: Alright! And of
course, in Enterprise Tech. Right here on the TWiT
network. Hey we’re going to jump over now to our friend Bryan Burnett. He is
out technical director on this show. That means he pushes all the buttons, and
this is an amazing thing, that he is now going to fade from me to his review of
something new!

Bryan Burnett: This is Bryan Burnett from Before You
Buy and TWiT, and I’m here to show you the Velodyne
WI-Q 10” Subwoofer. At first glance, this looks like any other subwoofer. A
black square box, they have done a little bit of a swoopy design on the front
grill that kind of adds to it. So it definitely feels well made, has a black
matte finish to it. Some of the features of the sub are it has a 390 WATTs dynamic
base and 195 watts RMS power. After removing the front panel you can see the
main driver, and on the top left corner is an IR receiver for the remote that
comes with the subwoofer, and a digital display. On the right side of the subwoofer
is a mic input for auto detecting your room settings and we’ll get into that
more later. On the bottom of the subwoofer is a port
that fires the base downward, spreading out, extending the distance of the
base. I would be remiss if I didn’t add Googly eyes
to that. Taking a closer look at the back, you’ll see that you have a low pass
crossover dial, next to that is a channel for using the wireless box, manual
volume up and down controls. Below that is a standby mode, or always on switch.
An output and input for low frequency, an IR input, and below that is speaker
level inputs and your power button. The other two accessories that come with
the subwoofer is a remote, which is pretty basic. Probably my only complaint of
this feeling kind of cheap, is the remote. It’s pretty
much the bare bones that they could do. And then the box, that allows you to
wirelessly transmit to the subwoofer.One of the features I liked most about the Velodyne,
was the one touch auto EQ button that aids in setting up the subwoofer. So once
you found the perfect place for your subwoofer in your set up, you can use this
to dial it in. Breaking it down for pros and cons, the number one pro for this
subwoofer is the sound. It had a really good low frequency bass to it, and
added a lot to the movie watching experience. The second pro is that it’s
wireless. This helped a lot when finding a position for it, and I could place
it in places that I wouldn’t be able to normally with wires connected to it.
And finally the build quality is really solid feeling. Subwoofer, there’s no
loose panels, everything’s put together really well.
On the con side, it would have to be the price. It’s the only one that I could
really come up with for this Subwoofer. At 799 dollars it is pretty pricy, but
the sound is really nice. And maybe my second con would be cheap feeling
accessories. But it's kind of a small con. So is the Velodyne WI-Q a buy, try,
or don’t buy? I would have to give it a buy! This is a really good sounding
subwoofer if you’re in the market, it has a couple of
features that make it easy to set up. And the wireless,
having it being wireless makes all the difference when setting up a subwoofer.
A lot of people overlook the need for a subwoofer, but if you’ve ever watched
your movie with the sub, and then try watching it again without the sub, you’ll
know what I mean when I say that subwoofers do make a big difference. And
having the subwoofer be wireless meant that I could
put it in the right place for my setup, which is far more important than buying
inexpensive subwoofer, and not having it in the right place. This has been
Bryan Burnett from Before You Buy, reviewing the
Velodyne Wi-Q 10” wireless Subwoofer. Thanks for watching.

Leo: Well there you go! A
buy from Bryan Burnett our technical director, on the Velodyne Wi-Q wireless
subwoofer. We go now from subwoofer to Snubs! Hi Shannon Morse!

Shannon Morse: Hi!

Leo: How are you? Host of Tekzilla.

Shannon: Yes.

Leo: And always welcome here on the show
with, what is this? A keyboard?

Shannon: It is! It’s the…

Leo: It sounds like a Lamborghini or
something.

Shannon: The Tesoro Lobera
Supreme..

Leo: What a name!

Shannon: Supreme mechanical keyboard.

Leo: Alright. Tesoro Lobera,
what does that mean? The treasure of…

Shannon: I don’t know what that means.

Leo: …Sierra Madre. It’s a monster keyboard.
Tell us about it.

Shannon: It is! It’s huge. So this is a gaming
mechanical keyboard. It costs 140 bucks. So this 3 really cool standout
features that I liked about this. The first was the LED backlighting. It’s full
RGB LEDS.

Leo: Pretty, oh so you can have any color.

Shannon: Any color, but the unfortunate thing
about this… Yeah, check this out. So I have five different profiles I can hit.
So they’re all. I set them up to all be different colors. And you can go in between
them with the little function keys at the top, and by hitting down on this
little function Tesoro key.

Leo: So you can have it be the color of your
league of legends team.

Shannon: Yes, but the unfortunate thing that I
noticed about this, and I currently have it on fade, so it’ll fade back and
forth between the colors. You can only do one color at a time, so you can’t do separate
colors for separate keys. So if you wanted to do like W,A,S,D
in red…

Leo: That would be cool!

Shannon: …and the rest in yellow that would be
awesome, but they don’t do that. The only thing you can do that’s similar is by
turning them all the way up so that you have just the gaming ones lit and the
rest of them are turned off.

Leo: Okay, so they do highlight the critical
keys.

Shannon: Yeah, but I would rather it be like a
bunch of different colors so I could have a full…

Shannon: So the second thing I found was really
cool with this is the fact that you can do macros. So normally, see on a mechanical
gaming keyboard is a whole side macro over here. Where you
have a bunch of different keys that you can choose. So instead of having
those keys over here, t they’ve put them down here, and there’s just three of
them. The cool thing about these three keys is you can record a certain combination
of keysets. Like if you’re playing an RTS game, and you have a really cool combination,
you can record it for your actual speed in real time gaming mode. And play it
back just by hitting that key. So I set mine up on my computer to just do a
quick feature where it presses in a whole bunch of things that say a full
sentence, whenever I hit that key.

Leo: that’s nice.

Shannon: Yeah, it’s kind of cool. And you can do
that for all three of these and you can just hit it with your thumb. It’s much
easier than having to push your finger out, which I really liked about this,
especially when I was in my game mode.

Leo: Now this looks like a metal finish, but
it’s plastic.

Shannon: Yes, it is plastic. They did do this
nice metal finish, or it looks like brushed metal along the sides, so it does
look really nice, and very pretty. But it’s definitely not really metal. And
then I also wanted to point out that they have, instead of just having metal or
a plastic backing here, they did include rubberized texture on the feet, so it
doesn’t bounce around as you’re getting into the games really quick. And the
last really cool thing that they included on here is extra ports. So if you
plug in the microphone and the headphone ports on your computer through this
braided keyboard. This braided cord, you can also plug
in your own headphone and mic through here. You will need to plug in an additional
DC out right here to power those, and if you want to charge any multiple items
as well like you’re phone while you’re playing your games, you can do that as
well.

Leo: I was wondering why the keyboard was so
thick, now I understand why. It’s got a lot of stuff going on there.

Shannon: Yeah, nice braided cord, which I really
like.

Leo: Now you said mechanical keys, I think,
you know, sometimes in an office, for instance, you want something that’s a
soft touch quite key.

Shannon: These are pretty loud.

Leo: When you’re gaming you want some…

Shannon: You want some nice tactile feedback.
And these do give you that tactile feedback. It definitely does. They are a
little bit softer than Logitech keyboard that I have at home. They feel a
little bit softer.

Leo: But I don’t feel the buckling keys
click.

Shannon: These are brown, but they do have a
blue version. If you’re familiar with Cherry MX keyboards.

Leo: Yeah, so this is a cherry?

Shannon: Yeah, this is kind of like cherry, it’s actually called kale keyboard switches.
Pretty much the same thing, just a different company makes them. A different brand.

Leo: Anybody things Kale is as good as
cherry is crazy!

Shannon: Yeah, so blue would give you the most
tactile feedback, and this is brown.

Leo: Would you rather have a cherry pop tart
or a Kale pop tart?

Shannon: I would prefer cherry myself.

Leo: Wouldn’t you? I would think so.

Shannon: Cherry blue MX, which is myself, which is what I have at home. But this is pretty
close, so I like that.

Leo: Okay, good but not great.

Shannon: Good, but not great. So it’s supposed
to last up to 50 million actuations. Which means 50 million keystrokes, so
that’s going to last you a nice long time, and you can do up to 300 different
macros per profile. And since you have five profiles, lots of
different macros that you can use for your games.

Leo: Wow. 140 bucks.Pros and cons?

Shannon: So, my pros and cons of this. It has a
great build quality, really like that. Really cool features and I like the
additional ports that it put in. On the con side though, you could only do one
color at a time, which irks me. I really want to get color some on there. And the software. Can I show you this software real quick?
It’s terrible!

Leo: Is it complicated?

Shannon: It is so bad.

Leo: Oh it’s ugly!

Shannon: Look at this.

Leo: It’s a model of the keyboard itself. It
looks like a bad win amp scan.

Shannon: It took me half an hour to figure out
how to actually change the colors! You have to hit your profile, and then
double click on there. So that’s annoying! There’s no software implementation.
It’s just ugly. So I didn’t like the software, I think they should update that
for people that are in their 20s and 30s.

Shannon: Buy, try, or don’t buy? I give it a
try. So it’s up there, I hate the software, I think they should update that and
include more additional LED colors.

Leo: I don’t often play games, but when I
do, I play on the Tesoro Lobera! That’s who they
should get to do this. Thank you Shannon Morse! We can catch you on Tekzilla.

Shannon: Yes.

Leo: Tekzilla.com on a regular bases tekzilla. Is Patrick treating you right?

Shannon: Patrick is a horrible co-host. Just
kidding!

Leo: Oh tell me about it girlfriend! I can
tell you such stories!

Shannon: I love that guy!

Leo: I love Patrick too. I’m jealous you get
to work with him all the time. Thank you Shannon!

Shannon: Thank you.

Leo: We’re going to take a break, when we
come back we’re going to review the phone that you’re about to buy!

Shannon: Yes! Already bought
it.

Leo: Just came out, you already bought it,
you’re about to get it. The hottest new phone on the market today, at least
until next week. The Galaxy note 4, that’s coming up in just a second. But
first I want to show you my tool kit. Don’t you love IFIXIT? Who doesn’t love
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and love, and we do too! Kyle Weems and the gang, I just think they’re the
greatest, at IFIXIT.com. This is not mine. I have mine
at home! Alright, I have the Galaxy note 4. I know Shannon,
you’re going to be looking at this with interested because, well it’s too late
for you, so if I hated this you’d be out of luck. But guess what? I don’t, and
this may come as a surprise for a lot of people, because for a lot of years
I’ve said Samsung they junk their phones up, they’ve got great hardware, but what’s
with this touch whiz and this funky camera and all that? Well I was really
interested in the new Galaxy Note 4. First of all, I’ve had every note since
the first one came out. I was the guy, yeah, who had the giant phone that you
mocked. Now it doesn’t look so big, does it? This is a 5.7 inch phone, it’s
actually physically smaller than the iPhone 6 plus, even though it has a bigger
screen because Samsung doesn’t have a lot of bezels. These are almost edge to
edge screen, and boy what a great screen. It’s a quad HD screen. I think it’s
2560 by 1440. There are a few phones out now with that kind of resolution, of
course the LGG 3 was the first, the Nexus 6, which is coming out soon will also
have quad HD, but I’ve got to tell you, Samsung super Amulet screens, there’s
nothing better! These look so good, the blacks are so black. The whites are so
bright, the colors are so rich! Here look over my shoulder,
you can get a better idea of how this looks. Now of course, you’re looking on
your screen at home. Notice one thing, I immediately took of touch whiz, and
I’m using a nova launcher. That’s one thing I wanted to emphasize, you’re not
stuck with touch whiz, and if you like touch whiz there’s some new features. In
fact, let me launch the touch whiz browser, so you can at least see what
Samsung is offering for…or touch whiz launcher, not browser. They’ve customized
things quite a bit, actually I don’t know how to get
in there anymore. But somehow I can get in there a little later on. But I do
want to show you one of the things Samsung still does poorly. Now this is touch
whiz, you can’t change the quick settings And look how clutter this screen is.
Once you get used to it, you might find it’s really great that you have all
these controls, but it feels like a 747 cockpit. Up here, the quick touch
settings, and of course, you can customize those to your heart’s content. This
is brightness, and one of the nice things about Samsung, and a lot of others
don’t do this. You can have auto brightness, but nudge it a couple of stops up
or down, depending on your personal taste. So if you want to save battery nudge
it down by two. If you really like a crisp bright screen, nudge it up a couple,
or just put it right in the middle. These two buttons, you’ll never use S
finder is basically a global search, forget about it! I don’t even remember
what quick connect does. Connect to somebody else using a Samsung phone in your
neighborhood. Who cares!! Forget quick connect! This
is just, that should not be there! I should be able to get rid of this! These
are my notifications, some of them of course are mind.
Noticed Samsung is doing something kind of interesting here. I have it set up
so that it will automatically bond different connections so I can use the 4G
plus the WIFI for faster downloads. I don’t know of any phone that does that.

Shannon: That’s cool.

Leo: That’s kind of a nice feature. Samsung
also has stayed with the physical home button. For me that’s a little bit of a
negative. I’m not a big fan of physical home buttons, but I’ve got to say, it
works. And they have capacitive soft touch buttons here at the bottom. Unlike
the standard, with Android these days, these are not onscreen buttons. The plus
of that is it doesn’t take any screen space. This is a back button, this is a
recent apps button, and of course, the home button. And these can be overloaded
to do more things if you press and hold, things like
that. This is all customizable. And that’s the thing that really I want to emphasize
about the Note 4. This is a phone for people like you Shannon, people who love
to tweak. Who love to change things, who love to set things.
There are more settings in here than you can shake a stick at. Samsung, you
remember, on the last phone, the S5 and the previous note 3, had multiple pages
of settings. They’ve gone back to the super long list! This goes on, and on,
and on, and on, and on. There are so many things you can set in here! I don’t even
know where to start. Let’s go, I’ll give you a couple and you can distinguish
this phone. This is a fingerprint reader at the bottom. S5 had that. It is
probably not as good as Apples IPhone fingerprint reader. But it’s pretty darn
good. You can train it for up to three fingers. I’ve trained it for both thumbs
and an index finger. You have to swipe pretty much vertically down, but it
works! And more than working to unlock the phone, it also works with Google
wallet, it works with my banking applications, it works with Last pass. So if
your applications are set up to use fingerprint authentication, and Last Pass,
for instance, which I use all the time, is, that’s a huge convenience! I loved
that on the iPhone, it does it very well on the Galaxy note 4. I should also
point out that this has a massive battery in it. It is a 3320 milliamp hour
battery. And it’s removable. This is one of the last killer feature phones on
the market that still has a back, crappy though it may be, that you can pull
off and you can get access, to look how big that battery is! You can also add
an SD card up to 128 gigabytes. That kind of makes up for the
fact that they only have 32 gigabytes of storage on the phone. I find
that’s ample, I’m very happy with it. And the fact that I can put a big SD card
in there kind of makes up for that. You’ll also notice a couple of extra things
on the back here. Besides the really excellent, 13 megapixel, I’m sorry 16 megapixel
camera. There’s, like on the S5, there’s a fingerprint, not a fingerprint, a
heart rate monitor and something they call S02 oxygen monitor, and you hold
your finger there. Forget it you’re never going to use that! It also has a
pedometer in here, and all that ties into the Samsung S health application. One
more feature that the Notes have become famous for, the S-pen stylus. It works
better than ever on this. I love it very nice stylus, pressure sensitive so you
can get fine lines and you get thick lines. It really is, and it’s very fluid.
You can see how fast it keeps up. That’s probably because there’s
three gigs of RAM in here. The snapdragon 805 processors run at 2.7 gigahertz.
I have the unlocked European version, which has Samsung’s proprietary octocore EXNOS processor, running at a slightly slower speed.
But I have to say, plenty of processing power. This thing is a monster! The
camera, you know, arguably the best camera on the market today, I would say
without a doubt, oh lets close this out. Without a doubt, the
best camera on an Android phone. It competes very well with Apples IPhone
6. And has some very nice features. Who took that? Oh that’s a selfie! That’s
one of the features, is you can turn the phone around. There’s a selfie
version, that when you turn it around it actually sees your face, counts you
down with haptic feedback, you don’t have to use the front camera. You might
though, because its 120 degrees angle on the front camera. It’s a special
selfie camera, and it’s a pretty good front camera. I think it’s a 3.7 megapixel,
so that’s great. Also, ultra HD video, let me play it
back here. I just took this video, let me see if it’s
going to turn sideways. The quality of the video, you really can’t see here,
superb! The amazing HD video, I work with weirdoes! I’m sorry, what can I say?
The picture quality is excellent. I couldn’t be happier with this. I’ll put
some samples up on line, but one of the reasons people are buying the Galaxy
note 4 is because it does in fact, have, I bet for you this is true too, it has
a really superb camera. Now one thing, we dinged the S5 and S4 for is all of
the camera modes that go on and on! Samsung has been listening,
they’ve really stripped out a lot of the weirdness that they put in the S5. For
instance, yes the modes are there, but you can turn them off so you never see
them. So if you never want to use beauty face, or
multiple shots you can just turn them off. Pick the ones you want, by default
only a few are turned on. I do like selective focus,
we’ve seen that before on the M8, the HTC1, and the Lumia phones. That’s the
ability to pull focus in or out, depending on what you want. After
you take the picture. The sports shot is kind
of interesting. It now has several modes within the sport shot. If you take a
picture, you can choose to have, in fact I think I did it with Burke, I’ll go
back and see if I can find that. So I had burke walk
across the scene, and you can choose whether to erase him completely or have
multiple shots of him walking across the scene. You get to choose. You can have
a, that’s the drama shot, and when you have a drama shot, you can pick which of
these images. So I shot him as he’s walking across, and I can have as many of
him as I want. This is a nice thing! I really, I think you’re going to have fun
with this! Now obviously Burke walking across the set is not very interesting,
but if somebody is snowboarding, diving off a diving board. Doing something
that’s actually interesting, this is a very nice feature. I was very pleased
with this, and again, it’s hidden away, so if you’re not interested in it, you
don’t have to see it. The eraser shot is hysterical, because it looks at the
original and then erases unwanted moving objects. I like it! Bye, bye Burke! So
they’ve really put some thought into this, they’ve added nice features, but
they’ve hidden them away so that you don’t have to see them. In fact, in
general touch whiz is much cleaner, they’ve listened to people and they’ve
taken out a lot of the cruft, including the multipage settings, the weird stuff
in the cameras. I think this just even
looks better. Lots of features in here, yes you can touch and pay with your Google
wallet or other credit cards. NFC is built in, I think
the S pen works great. Remember all the weird motion and gestures and things
like it would look at your eyes, you could scroll up and down, they took all of
that stuff out. It does the things that really matter, for instance, it’ll
notice if you’re looking at it and not go blank if you want. You can still do a
screen shot by wiping your hand across it. A few of the things that were actually
useful are still there. But a lot of those weird things like scrolling by
moving your eyes up and down, gone! Gone! And I have to praise Samsung for
doing that. For a long time, my mom used a Galaxy Note 3 in easy mode. If you
know somebody who doesn’t want anything too fancy, the easy mode is big icons,
very easy to use and really takes a lot of the complexity of a phone like this
out of the picture. So I’m very pleased with that. Samsung has done a good job
listening to its user, improving the phone, and amazing screen. The S pen works
great, it’s got a lot of power in it. Including a
bunch of battery life, I’m getting, currently at 31 % after about 8 hours. And
that’s when you get a new phone you use it a lot. I think it’s going to get
even better than that, and because it’s removable, 20 bucks you pick up an
extra battery, never have to worry about running out.

Shannon: I’m so picking up an extra battery.

Leo: Oh, no wonder I’m killing the battery
life, there’s that flash on. Let’s see, pros and cons here, gorgeous screen,
quad HD, and it’s not sluggish at all because they’ve jammed a lot of processor
power, in fact, the specs, in general, are amazing. 2560 by 1440, it’s almost a
3 gigahertz processor. 2.7 hertz, gigahertz quad core processor in a phone!
That’s amazing! I really like the 16 megapixel camera on the back. The front
camera is 3.7 megapixels. Optical image stabilization.
Infrared IR is back, so you can use it as a remote control, the Samsung TV app
makes it very easy to set up. Amp plus and a lot of other multimedia things
people really like. The S pen works great, the fingerprint reader actually
works. Hey! Kudos to Samsung, and I think the pedometer, the health monitors
are really nice. On the con, well because it’s got touch whiz on here, this is
a kit Kat phone, but lollipop is going to come out any day now, and you know
that will be available to people who use Nexus phones, for instance, but not
for Touch whiz phones for quite some time. Because Samsung has to take that
source code and fix it and make it work with Touch Whiz. That slows everything
down. So it is Kit Kat, I’m going to have to say that’s a negative given that
Lollipop is due any minute now. Speaker is not great. It has a single speaker
in the back, it’s loud but kind of tiny. And the
price, whoa!! If you get this from a carrier with a two year plan, 300 dollars!
Is that what you paid?

Shannon: Nope, I’m doing the full price!

Leo: And the full price, 800 dollars for
this phone! Actually I think we’ve found it on Amazon for $850.

Shannon: You can find it for as little as $650.

Leo: You find it for $650?

Shannon: If you do the smaller gig version, the
32 gig.

Leo: Wow. I should have shopped around.
Alright, there you go, it’s very expensive still.

Shannon: Yes.

Leo: Especially when you see phones that are
very close in specs, like the One plus1 for half that
much. And also you’ve got to remember the Nexus 6, Googles Nexus phone is going
to have many of these same specs for about the same price, but will have
lollipop, and the pure Google experience. You’re really going to have a tough
decision.

Shannon: I kind of want one too.

Leo: You’re going to have a tough decision
ahead of you. But here’s the good news. I’m very happy to say, I’m definitely
giving a buy, you did the right thing, on the Galaxy Note 4. Samsung has
listened to all the complaints. Complaints I made about having too much cruft
on it. Making it too complicated to use. They’ve kept the stuff that people really
like, and they’ve made it an amazing power horse of a phone. A
definite buy on the brand new, and very expensive, Samsung Galaxy Note 4.
Thank you Shannon Morse! Thank you Bryan Burnett.
Thank you Father Robert Ballacer! Sam,
from Windows Central. Thanks to you for watching. We do this show, brand
new, fresh content every single Tuesday right after Security Now. You can watch
it live, you know, it’s kind of chopped up when you do it live. But you can
also get the full show at our website, twit.tv/byb.
You can also find it on YouTube. Youtube.com/beforeyoubuy. Actually there’s a little something
special we do there on the YouTube channel. Not only do you get the whole show
but individual reviews are there to, but if you want to share, say a galaxy
note review, with someone who is interested in buying one you can do that
directly from the YouTube site. We also invite your comments and questions and
suggestions for products you’d like to see reviewed, at byb@twit.tv Subscribe, make sure you get every episode, we’re on all the pod catcher clients. Thanks for
joining us! And remember, we’ll see you next time. You’ve got to watch Before
You Buy! Bye, bye!